(Nov 11, 2022)
Here’s a question I’ve been wondering about:
Is Elon Musk trying to destroy Twitter?
I’m not sure why the new owner of the social media app would want to do that. Yet, if the decisions he’s making are any indication, it almost seems like that’s the plan.
Update July 1st, 2:42PM ET: Elon Musk has now limited Twitter access for everyone, requiring a verified account to read more than 600 posts per day.
(14.06.2021)
Amazon claims to be innovative, but its strategies of market dominance and labor exploitation are as old as capitalism itself, and were perfected by predecessors like Standard Oil, General Motors, US Steel, AT&T, Walmart and Microsoft. My union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, views this as history repeating itself.
The Roaring ‘20s were great for those at the top, but meant massive exploitation of workers. As we embark further into the 2020s, the Teamsters will make sure that Amazon cannot repeat a history where workers suffered acutely to make ends meet and were frequently injured or even killed on the job while company executives stuffed their pockets with the profits.
(16.01.2023)
The House and Senate are set to reconvene this week after the U.S. hit its debt ceiling last week, setting off a roughly six-month sprint for Congress to either raise the borrowing limit or risk economic catastrophe.
Rachel Harrison, GMB National Secretary, said:
“GMB’s ambulance workers are angry. In their own words ‘they are done’.
„Our message to the Government is clear – talk pay now.
“Ministers have made things worse by demonising the ambulance workers who provided life and limb cover on strike days – playing political games with their scaremongering.
“The only way to solve this dispute is a proper pay offer.
Jade McCauley was due to start a completely new job tomorrow which would have bumped her yearly salary up by £8,000.
However, the community nurse at Northern General Hospital in Sheffield had a change of due to her passion for helping patients.
The 34-year-old spoke to the Mirror on the picket line outside the hospital today.
She also raised concerns about patient safety and called on Rishi Sunak to „spend a day in our shoes“.
A meeting held this morning with Health Secretary Stephen Barclay was described as „constructive“ by one doctors‘ union leader. But Professor Philip Banfield, chair of council at the British Medical Association (BMA), said there was no mention of one-off payments for NHS staff.
„People can‘t get appointments anymore so they put off going to the doctor and when it gets worse they come to us,“ he says.
He and colleagues are also struggling with the cost of living, Mr Mistry say.
„I‘m now having to think about how much heating I have on in the house – I have it on for two hours a day now.“
Union leaders have previously argued that walkouts by staff across multiple sectors would constitute a de facto general strike, the like of which has not been seen in the UK since 1926.
Only the Trade Union Congress (TUC) has the power to call a general strike, though its legality remains unclear after laws were tightened in the 80s.
The umbrella organisation which represents the majority of trade unions in the UK has a total of around 5.5million members.
„I work for a Class 1 railroad that implemented one of the most egregious attendance policies (Hi-Viz) that requires us to be available to work 92% of the time per month,“ he said. „If we take off one day for a sickness, we are required to [work] 14 days straight to gain points back. That is why we are fighting tooth and nail for sick days.“
Dec 2, 2022
President Joe Biden signed a bill on Friday that prevents 12 rail unions from going on strike next week. The president signed the bill to head off a potentially crippling supply chain disruption in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
Devin Mantz: I voted no on the contract because we deserve more.
Adam Smithey: It does not meet the requirements for quality of life that we need. We need time to sleep, we need time to rest, we need to enjoy our lives. We don’t have any of that now.
Matt Weaver: We’re considered essential employees, and we don’t have a single paid sick day to use when we’re off. We worked through the pandemic, we were considered essential, and now it seems like we’re expendable.
Dave Manning: If a person is sick, they shouldn’t have to use all of their paid days that they had to earn the previous year before to take a day off.
Matt Morty Mortenson: We’re constantly coming to work sick and exhausted.
Reece Murtagh: We routinely work 14 hours and longer every day.
Matt Morty Mortenson: We’ve currently lost 2 BMWED members in the past two weeks and they might have been here today with us if they would have just been able to rest and reset.
The deal gives the union members an immediate 14% raise with back pay dating back to 2020, and raises totaling 24% during the five-year life of the contract, that runs from 2020 through 2024. It also gives them cash bonuses of $1,000 a year.
Few other details of the deal have so far been made public. But the statement from Biden indicated that the major issue that had brought the country within a day of its first national rail strike in 30 years had been addressed in the unions’ favor.
Railroad Workers United is an inter-union, cross-craft solidarity „caucus“ of railroad workers, and their supporters, from all crafts, all carriers, and all unions across North America. We urge union railroaders to continue being active in their craft union AND to join RWU in building solidarity and strength among all rail workers. We work with union rank & file railroad workers, but we welcome yet-to-be organized rail workers as well. In addition, we actively work with other labor and community organizations on issues of mutual concern. We do not accept managers or those who oppose our principles.
(May 5, 2022)
Jeff Kurtz: Okay, thank you, Max. I’d like the viewers to imagine that their life is a scorecard, because that’s exactly what these workers are facing. They start off with a score of 30 points that they can never exceed that 30 points. They will get four points allocated back to their score. Say they get down to 20 points. If they work 14 days in a row, they will get four points allocated back to their score. But the points that you can lose are really dramatic. So, I mean, you could lose points for an incident. You could lose 15 points for an incident.
There are specific incidents. If you don’t show up for work for whatever reason. We had a gentleman that was in a car wreck, and it wasn’t his fault. He was about a mile from his terminal and his car was totaled. And the supervisor that came out there told him, she said, you’re not going to work. She said, you could be hurt, and we don’t know it. So they, what we call marked this guy off. They marked him off the job. Well, he initially was saddled with a 15 point deduction for not showing up to work. And eventually, I think that the local supervisor protested this, so they only docked him three points.
But this is exactly what’s going on. I heard of a case where a worker, his mother died while he was en route, and the railroad pulled him off the train, and then they tried to dock him points for it. And the stories just go on and on and on. And Max, what you alluded to as far as things getting worse when people aren’t watching, that’s exactly what’s happening.
More than 115,000 rail workers will be legally allowed to strike on Friday.
(October 1, 2021)
DP World is one of the world’s largest operators of marine ports and inland cargo terminals, stretching from gateways in London and Antwerp to hubs in Africa, Russia, India and the Americas. It recently announced a string of deals as it attempts to become a more diversified, integrated logistics company.
Meanwhile, it continues to look for ways to cut debt. DP World is considering offering international investors a chance to buy into the Jebel Ali Free Zone, a prized asset that helped transform Dubai into a hub of global trade, people familiar with the matter have said.
(Oct 19, 2021)
Global food prices shot up nearly 33 percent in September compared with the same period the year before. That’s according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)‘s monthly Food Price Index, which also found that global prices have risen by more than three percent since July, reaching levels not seen since 2011.
(20.10.2021)
Mr Wright said that while there are some shortages on shelves, the UK does have sufficient food.
He added: „We are not going to run out of food but there are some shortages, we have seen some problems with pigs and poultry, with some of these being solved.“
(October 26, 2021)
„It is now clear that the increased costs from labour shortages, supply chain issues and rising commodity prices have started filtering through to the consumer.“
(October 26, 2021)
This year is a different story. Several factors are combining to drive up food prices, including labor shortages, higher transportation costs and supply-chain disruptions.
29 September 2021
Since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the maritime, road and aviation industries have called loudly and clearly on governments to ensure the free movement of transport workers and to end travel bans and other restrictions that have had an enormously detrimental impact on their wellbeing and safety. Transport workers keep the world running and are vital for the free movement of products, including vaccines and PPE, but have been continually failed by governments and taken for granted by their officials.
Our calls have been consistent and clear: freedom of movement for transport workers, for governments to use protocols that have been endorsed by international bodies for each sector and to prioritise transport workers for vaccinations as called for in the World Health Organization’s SAGE Roadmap for Prioritizing Uses of COVID-19 Vaccines in the Context of Limited Supply.
Heads of government have failed to listen, to end the blame-shifting within and between governments and take the decisive and coordinated action needed to resolve this crisis.
(29.09.2021)
Seafarers, truck drivers and airline workers have endured quarantines, travel restrictions and complex Covid-19 vaccination and testing requirements to keep stretched supply chains moving during the pandemic.
But many are now reaching their breaking point, posing yet another threat to the badly tangled network of ports, container vessels and trucking companies that moves goods around the world.
Along with ongoing Covid-related restrictions in some large manufacturing countries such as Vietnam, and a well-documented shortage of components such as computer chips, factories are simply not producing enough.
British car production dropped by 27% year on year in August as a lack of semiconductors and led to a big drop in the number of vehicles exported to Australia, the US and China. On Thursday, Volkswagen, Ford and Opel maker Stellantis announced fresh temporary closures in Germany because of the chip problem.
Sebastian James is one of the most prominent business leaders so far to speak out in support of the Daily Mail campaign to stop vital workers being compelled to isolate unnecessarily.
In an interview with the Mail, he revealed that staff absence rates have increased by 50 per cent throughout his chain‘s 2,330 stores, which offer important pharmacy services to the public.
While the amount of time spent at work was cut dramatically, productivity — measured by sales per employee — went up by almost 40% compared to the same period the previous year, the company said in a statement last week.
In addition to reducing working hours, managers urged staff to cut down on the time they spent in meetings and responding to emails.